A travel blog worth reading

About

I never went abroad as a child (well apart from going to Ireland for my gran’s funeral but that was a sombre affair and there wasn’t any sightseeing). While all my school classmates were going to Spain, France and Florida my family would settle for the slightly cheaper “delights” of a static caravan in Wemyss Bay, Fife or Seaton Sands. It was that exciting…not that I dislike holidaying in my home country (Scotland) but as you’d expect many of these holidays were cold, wet and full of disappointment. I remember being on holiday just outside Inverness and being a young geek (of sorts) I had an interest in castles, so we drove to Cawdor castle but it was too expensive to get in so we just visited the gardens even though I had no interest in flowers…the next day we went to Fort George but that was even more expensive so we didn’t go in there either, finally on day 3 we visited Moniack castle, which wasn’t really a castle at all but a place where they made wine/liquer and soap nearby, and at my age I was too young for booze and had no desire for soap! My dad would always try and be creative and turn a visit to a shop into a “tourist attraction”. It rarely worked, Me and my brothers still had my places we wanted to go, so turning up at paid visitor attractions and then leaving without entering was a frequent disappointing holiday experience. Blame it on only one modest wage coming into the house, with no concept of haggling or how to get good deals.

After I left school and went to college and university I didn’t go anywhere either, blame that on me lacking imagination and spending all my money on CDs and friends with no money and no clue of where to possibly go for a holiday.

But when I was 24 things changed and I finally travelled abroad, alone, to Sweden, to meet a bunch of internet strangers, one of whom I was stayed with, and he didn’t kill me! And despite my dad’s warnings of “cultural shock”, “homesickness” and “blah blah blah” it all worked out. In fact I loved it so much that I decided that from then on I would be spending as much money as I could to visit as many places as possible, as cheaply as possible, to broaden my horizon, see new things and meet new people, and a love of photography developed out of this too.

This blog is all about my experiences and funny things usually happen on my travels so I hope to capture them here in a blog which is both informative and entertaining (if I do say so myself!), so yes the posts may be long but I’ll do my best to strip out the boring bits and stick to the entertaining stuff only.